Paws for thought
by Vince and the Tokomons
Summary: The Digidestined girls are on a camping trip to the digital world. New powers are revealed and strange changes occur.
1. Default Chapter

Yagami Hikari led on her back looking up at the stars that shone brightly above her on this clear summer night in the Digiworld. Her Digimon partner Gatomon lay beside her, idly playing with her tail-ring. They were on a camping trip with the eldest two female digidestined, Sora and Mimi, and their partners.  
  
"What does it feel like," Hikari asked, "to change forms so often? To evolve from a feline to a humanoid shape and then back again with little time to truly enjoy the effects of the change?"  
  
"It does seem weird sometimes." Replied Gatomon, "But it would really be impossible to describe the feeling. You would have to experience it to fully understand how the change affects you."  
  
"I sometimes wish I could experience it, if only for a short while." Said Hikari, wishfully.  
  
"Well. there is a way," Gatomon said hesitantly, "but I'm really not supposed to let you try it or even talk about it really."  
  
"Really?" gasped Hikari, "How? Please, I must know how it feels to evolve and de-evolve."  
  
Gatomon removed her clawed gloves and handed them to Hikari. "Okay then. This goes against my better judgement, but you're my friend, and I really do find it hard to deny you anything. If you put on my gloves, then a strange force that not even Gennai understands will temporarily change you into a Gatomon. When you take off the gloves, you will return to normal. You might also want to remove all your clothes before you put the gloves on, because the change in your dimensions may damage them."  
  
Hikari quickly removed the clothes she had been wearing to keep the chill off and, shivering slightly, slipped on the gloves. For the first few seconds nothing seemed to happen, but then a strange itchy feeling started in her cheeks. Reaching up to her face Hikari felt whiskers growing from either side of her mouth. This was strange not only because of the whiskers' sudden presence on her face, but also because she could feel them through the gloves, almost as if they had become a part of her.  
  
A few seconds later Hikari felt her hair being pushed aside as her ears grew outwards from the side of her head, assuming a shape much more like that of Gatomon's, with little tufts of purple hair growing at the end of each one. They soon stood out several inches more than her ears had previously done. Hikari gave her head a little shake as the sounds around her suddenly became louder and clearer, her senses changing to match the new form she was taking. With a wriggle, her nose changed ever so slightly, allowing her to locate Gatomon, even with her eyes closed, merely by breathing through her nose and following the distinctive scent that, scant seconds before, she would not even have been able to smell, let alone recognise and pin-point its source.  
  
She gave a little yelp and stood up quickly as something moved beneath her. Her tail, for that is what it was, snaked out from the bottom of her spine to a length of almost three feet. She felt something changing within her mouth and ran her now surprisingly supple tongue across her teeth to investigate. She found that all her teeth were now sharper than before and that her canines, in particular, were a good deal longer than she was used to.  
  
"Wow!" exclaimed Hikari as the changes drew to a close. "That was amazing. How do I look?" Hikari noticed a worried look pass across Gatomon's face. "Wh-what's wrong Gatomon?"  
  
"The changes didn't go as they were supposed to." Gatomon replied. "You were supposed to change completely into a Gatomon, but you seem to have changed into a human with Gatomon features. I think you had better change back quickly. Take the gloves off."  
  
Hikari glanced down at the gloves she was wearing and, with a small sigh, started to tug on them. After a second she began to pull harder and then harder still. After a few seconds she looked up with a terrified expression on her face. "Gatomon, they're stuck!" 


	2. 

"Gatomon, they're stuck!"  
  
Yagami Hikari let out a frightened cry as she desperately tugged at the gloves that now seemed to be a part of her hand.  
  
"That's impossible!" her digimon partner Gatomon cried. "They're supposed to come straight off. Here, let me have a look." Gatomon reached for the gloves that had, until a few minutes ago, been worn on her paws. When she touched them, both the gloves and her paws were enveloped in a bright yellow light. She yelped and tried to pull away, but without success. When the light subsided she found that she was now wearing a pair of gloves that exactly matched the ones now attached to her partner. "But, but, it can't be!" Gatomon exclaimed as she tried to remove the gloves that had just appeared on her paws, forgetting for the moment her partner and her predicament. Finding her new gloves to be as immovable as Hikari's she calmed down somewhat to think about their next move. She threw a blanket to Hikari, who wrapped it around her shoulders to preserve her modesty. "We'd better go find Gennai."  
  
Barely had they begun to move when a robed figure appeared in a puff of smoke. The figure pulled back his hood to reveal the form of a young man with a long thin ponytail. "What happened here? I recorded a massive power surge followed by what appeared to be some sort of copy program being run." He looked at the two figures before him and gave a startled intake of breath. "Good Lord! Hikari? What happened? Who did this to you?"  
  
Hikari ran to the figure and threw her arms around him, almost in tears. "Gennai, thank goodness you're here! Gatomon was showing me how I could become a digimon for a short time but something went wrong. Instead of turning completely into a digimon I stopped half way and now I can't change back!"  
  
Gennai rounded on Gatomon and fixed her with a piercing glare. "Gatomon," he said with a low growl, "how could you do this? You know perfectly well that the power to change your partner into a digimon was only to be used in an emergency, to save their lives if they are injured or to hide them from anything that can track humans in the Digital World."  
  
"I didn't know it would do this to Hikari. Plus she's my friend and I couldn't lie to her and say there was no way for her to become a digimon when she wanted to know if there was a way." Gatomon retorted. "Besides, you said that it was completely safe to use and that there were no side- effects."  
  
"That is true," Gennai replied, "There were supposed to be no side- effects. All our simulations and tests showed there to be no change to the human's status after the process had been performed and reversed. Unless. something must have interfered with the process, stopping it halfway."  
  
"You can change me back can't you? Gatomon said all I had to do was remove the gloves and I'd change back. Can't you just pull the gloves off somehow?" Hikari was, if anything, even closer to panicking than she was earlier.  
  
Gennai looked gravely at her. "I'm sorry Hikari, removing the gloves at this stage, even assuming I managed to, could be very dangerous. You could become stuck in your current form, or worse. It could very easily erase you from existence."  
  
"What can we do?" Gatomon asked, hoping Gennai already had a plan for what to do next.  
  
"I really don't know," Gennai sighed, "We'd better go to my house. I can run some tests on Hikari there to determine what, if anything, we can do for her. You were here with Sora and Mimi right? We'll collect them and be on our way."  
  
After Sora, Mimi and their partners had been roused from where they were sleeping in a nearby clearing and had the situation briefly explained to them, Gennai teleported the group to his house. From the bushes a figure chuckled gleefully, pleased with his handiwork and the scene that had unfolded whilst he had been watching surreptitiously. 


End file.
